AIB Leinster Club SHC final: Ballyhale Shamrocks v St Mullin’s (tomorrow, 2pm, Portlaoise, deferred coverage on TG4 at 5.05pm)
IN as much as the club circuit offers proof of how a tiered structure can succeed in the GAA, there’s always the odd outlier.
It’s not that it’s Carlow v Kilkenny. It’s the fact that St Mullin’s, located right on the border between the two counties, take part in the junior hurling league in Kilkenny.
In a league game back in May, they were beaten by 1-34 to 2-7 at home by an unremarkable Piltown side.
“They destroyed us,” said St Mullin’s boss Niall O’Donnell earlier this week, calling on the darkest recess of the year.
What they’ve done from then to now has been remarkable, but not without precedent. Who could forget Mount Leinster Rangers’ trailblazing run to the All-Ireland final six years ago?
Carlow hurling has long been at the door looking in. Their county team has hung from the top tier’s tablecloth, and their club teams have fed off it in terms of belief.
It is a county on a definite trajectory, what with Éire Óg facing Ballyboden in next weekend’s provincial football decider. These are times unheard of.
There’s a chance that St Mullin’s will step out on to the tracks to meet a cargo load of realism tomorrow. But that was to be their fate against Cuala too.
The back-to-back All-Ireland champions of 2017 and 2018 haven’t replicated those heights, but that takes nothing away from St Mullin’s and their 2-13 to 0-18 win.
It was completely out of the blue. They needed extra-time to get over Ballinkillen in a Carlow semi-final that was the subject of a boardroom wrangle after St Mullin’s opponents refused to play on the original date owing to a cross-code clash.
They took their fight to Leinster Council and lost, only for St Mullin’s to then step in and offer to play it. Only a late Marty Kavanagh goal saved the winners, who went on to beat old rivals Mount Leinster Rangers in the decider.
Cuala had still beaten two-thirds of the same team by 12 points when they met three years ago in Leinster, but this was a meatier challenge.
St Mullin’s led for most of the game and in Kavanagh, they have an attacking orchestrator who is finally finding due recognition.
It was James Doyle, whoever, that rescued them the last day out against Laois champions Rathdowney-Errill. It needed two late scores to turn the deficit into a match-winning one-point lead.
Kavanagh spoke earlier in the week about not caring whether St Mullin’s are respected in the lead-in, but there is a sense that this is another level again.
Ballyhale will get another few good years out of TJ Reid and Colin Fennelly yet, with the former hitting 2-14 on the occasion of his 32nd birthday to headline their thumping semi-final win over St Martin’s.
The Shamrocks hit 5-18 that day, on top of the 3-21 in the quarter-final and 2-21 in the Kilkenny decider, where they were nine points too good for James Stephens.
Their attacking arsenal in simply frightening. Beyond the Hurler of the Year nominee and the evergreen Fennelly, they have Eoin Cody shooting it up too. He hit 3-4 in the Leinster quarter-final win over Clonkill, and has a tally of 6-18 for the championship without having struck a free.
With Joey Holden and Michael Fennelly (whose first game as Offaly manager is against Kildare this afternoon) at the heart of their defence, there’s a solidity that compliments their flair.
There will be a big Slaughtneil contingent in the stand at O’Moore Park to see what they’ll face on the first weekend of January. They, like the St Mullin’s supporters, might end up watching through their hands with a grimace.
